BALTIMORE, Aug. 20, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation's (NYSE:NOC) Electronic Systems sector has delivered the first AN/APG-80 advanced agile beam fire control radar to Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT) for the F-16 Block 60 aircraft being developed and produced for the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
"This important program milestone marks the culmination of engineering, manufacturing, and development efforts for the agile beam radar portion of the F-16 Block 60 program," said Craig Johnson, vice president of F-16 Sensor Systems at Northrop Grumman. "The APG-80, which features advanced air-to-air and air-to-ground modes, represents the first production system to benefit from Northrop Grumman's fourth-generation transmitter/receiver module technologies."
As Northrop Grumman commences delivery of production APG-80 radars for the F-16 Block 60 program, testing of additional software modes will continue into next year using test radars on board the company's BAC 1-11 test bed aircraft in Baltimore. APG-80 radar deliveries are scheduled through late 2005 for the fleet of 80 F-16 Block 60 aircraft destined for the UAE.
Following formal radar acceptance tests, witnessed in Baltimore in mid-July by officials from Lockheed Martin's F-16 Block 60 radar team, the radar was delivered to Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics Company facility in Fort Worth, Texas, where it will be installed by the end of September in the first F-16 Block 60 aircraft. The first flight of the aircraft, as part of the ongoing Lockheed Martin-led weapons systems development effort, is scheduled for late November.
The APG-80 is designed to search continuously for and track multiple targets within the forward hemisphere of the aircraft. As a result of increased operational flexibility, pilots will be able to simultaneously perform air-to-air search-and-track, air-to-ground targeting and aircraft terrain-following.
"This new agile beam approach represents a quantum leap forward in advanced, multimode fire control radar systems and will provide pilots with vastly improved situational awareness," Johnson added.
Additional advances of the APG-80 agile beam radar include much greater detection range, high-resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery, and a two-fold increase in reliability compared to conventional, mechanically scanned radars.
In addition to the radar, Northrop Grumman is providing the Integrated Forward-Looking Infrared and Targeting System (IFTS) and the Integrated Electronic Warfare System (IEWS) for the F-16 Block 60 aircraft. Included in the Block 60 contract is the Combined Intermediate Automatic Test Equipment (CIATE) program. The CIATE is capable of automatically testing all three Northrop Grumman sensor systems -- the APG-80, IFTS, and IEWS -- and will detect faults and allow subsystem repair down to the component level.
Headquartered in Baltimore, Md., Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems sector is a world leader in the design, development and manufacture of defense and commercial electronics and systems including airborne radar, navigation systems, electronic countermeasures, precision weapons, airspace management systems, communications systems, space systems, marine and naval systems, government systems and logistics services.